Living Life for Christ Alone

Seasons of great need - how easily we shun them like the plague.   The past several weeks have been drenched in many challenges and needs for me and my family.  Need that has had me crying out to God, “how long?”  I beg him for a time limit, some light at the end of the tunnel, but when I look for it, I just see more tunnel.  What is the purpose of a season like this?  This is the question I have found myself asking God on a near daily basis.  I won’t say I’ve found out the fullness of the answer yet, but pressing the question so much has yielded some light for me.  After all, He promises that those who seek will find.  And one thing He keeps pressing into my soul is this:  My need is my opportunity to test the limits I think God has on the amount of grace He will give me.  And oh, if I could recount to you all the ways He has already poured so much grace, you would think me a spoiled daughter of the King.  But if you saw how each d...

  When suffering grows long… Pretense is cast away and the true colors of our faith are revealed. Questions surface, doubts speak, and endurance wears thin.  This is when we are purified by fire. How will we answer the questions?  How will we fight the doubts?  How will we keep going through the suffering when the endurance all but disappears?  The answer is simple. So simple in fact, that we easily overlook it.  We can’t. Our own resources are not enough to pull us through. And when we finally embrace that fact, we open ourselves up to One greater than our weakness.  He steps amid the rubble of our broken lives, sees the crushed self-will, the shredded self-confidence, the sense that all control is lost, and finds us in a place where He can do something with us.  For before the long season of suffering began, though we thought we had built up something He could use, He saw how we were trying to mix self in with His power. And He also saw the grea...

  Weakness resisted is power resisted, for in God’s economy, weakness is the doorway through which His power can come. Weakness succumbed to is power missed, for weakness is not meant to be the thing we define ourselves by, but the catalyst for His life to come in and define us Weakness is not our stopping place, but a doorway to our abiding place- Jesus Christ. Let your weakness determine what you do, and you have stopped short of God’s purpose for that weakness. Let your weakness push you into intimacy with Christ -the very Source of strength- and you have begun to taste its purpose. Let your weakness remind you that others are also weak, and you have begun to see why Christ endured weakness too.  Let your weakness become a hole in your life through which His life may freely flow onto others who are also weak, and you have begun to experience His power which works best in weakness. God purposefully puts heavier weights that we cant actually carry so that we will learn to emb...

Love. What is it like?   At times, it’s silent and lowly.   He quiets me and beckon s for me to look.   A baby is nestled up to me, asleep. She feels safe and loved.   She knows she is cared for.   She knows she will have her needs met by me if she cries.   Sometimes, it seems she can’t get close enough to me.   She hangs on tight with her little arm around my shoulder.   I fight the restlessness inside. There is so much to do.   I feel like I have accomplished nothing.   But He settles me again, and motions towards the baby.   “This is kingdom work,” He whispers.   “Why?” I ask.   I won’t walk away from this later and feel like I’ve accomplished anything.   I won’t have a checked-off to-do list to show for this day.   I won’t be able to talk about some grand daring feat I managed to pull off.   It doesn’t seem to matter much in the bigger picture of things, my feelings say.   But then, ...